


The Jungle

by SylverFletcher



Series: Hermitcraft Gift Exchange [2]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Drabble, Found Family, Gen, Vague Narrative, domesticated creeper Doc au, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 20:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21380236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylverFletcher/pseuds/SylverFletcher
Summary: He was one of the creatures of the night, the things that searched out humans just to take their lives in a fateful blast with no rhyme or reason. He was wild, meant to be slain; and yet, they took him in. They taught him other ways to live, they taught him the value of friends.And then, it took them.(Gift 2 of 3 for the hermitcraft gift exchange)
Series: Hermitcraft Gift Exchange [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542508
Comments: 7
Kudos: 99





	The Jungle

**Author's Note:**

> this one is also for ate1minecraftbee.tumblr.com because i got halfway through the keralis and bdubs one, decided i hated it and it wasnt good enough, and since sapph mentioned in chat once they wanted to ask for the NHO but felt bad about it i binged Doc's entire perspective of season 5 and then this happened so uh there was nothing stopping me from doing a n g s t and my hand s l i p p e d

He was a different person back then. Someone who carried a shield in one hand at all times, someone whose sword swings weren’t accurate enough to keep him safe on their own, the weapon new and clunky in his inexperienced hand. He was quieter, more timid; he kept to himself, working away on his own things and never daring to overstep his own space. It was a new world to him, the one who came from the other side from the monsters they usually fought; he tripped over his words in a tongue he wasn’t used to, looking to those around him for corrections, looking to them for support in this society he wasn’t used to.

He looked to them for a lot of things, actually.

They were the ones he’d back away into, his back meeting their chests and their weapons rising up alongside his own whenever he faced an enemy. They were the ones to drag him from the flames when he fell into fire, they were the ones to yank him behind walls and out of the range of fatal arrows. He wasn’t like them, their pale skin that stood out against the green unlike his own, and yet they welcomed him in as one of their own anyway. They held hands out to him, pulling him up sheer cliff faces, and led the way over the other side with water he could safely land in. They pulled his sleeping mat closer to theirs by the fire at night, erasing the distance he thought they’d want and keeping him in the safety of the light. Anything that was theirs, they shared with him; from their knowledge, to their resources, to everything in between. He was a solitary creature, and for the first time, he had a group to call his own.

It all seemed so perfect when they found the jungle. It was huge, seeming to reach its green tendrils across the land forever, and they knew no one could find them in there. At first, they joked about how he could blend in, gently nudging him into bushes and realizing how quickly they’d lose sight of him. Someone even said something about him becoming their invisible guard, bringing down his wrath upon any who would trespass into what they’d decided would become _ their _ jungle, and he liked the idea. Soon enough it was clear that they could lose him completely just as quickly, though; he still remembered the way one of them had to hold onto him at all times, a firm grip on the coat they’d given him to keep him from getting separated and lost from the group forever.

When they found the place they’d set up camp, he was sure he’d never seen a nicer place. It was so lush and warm, with crystal clear water and endless swaths of greenery to hide them from anyone else. It was safe here, they agreed; and they turned to him, telling him he was safe, too. No one could find them here, and if they did, he could blend in. No one could get a hand up on him here, no one could surprise him and put an end to him in a way they had been too kind to do. The jungle was a new start for all of them, and he always had a sneaking suspicion that he was the reason they chose that particular place.

How he wished, now, that they’d chosen somewhere else.

It was so much fun at first. He could creep around in the underbrush like he had all his life, and then, he could pop out at any of them and give them a scare that always left them laughing afterwards, a hand on their chest as they wheezed at him. They worked together to clear a space, cutting back the foliage and making their home in an ancient structure they found deep within, one that he found himself gazing up at and feeling a kind of inspiration he never had before. It caught the keen eye of one of his new companions— friends, they kept telling him the word was, in a way that he was pulled aside and taught how to _ build. _ Taught to create, to take materials and make something entirely new, not to destroy, like he’d always known.

And so build he did; he forged a skull out of the stone and moss all around them with his very own hands, and when the others looked upon it with awe on their faces, he’d never felt more proud of himself. Next came the discovery of the red stuff; it wasn’t a discovery to the others, made clear by the way they explained it to him, but it sparked something in his mind and then he was off. He built mechanisms of all kinds, playing around with what was possible and learning all about this circuitry as he went, the ideas clicking with him far easier than even the building had. And they watched him go, all the while. They built their own things, never too far away and always ready to come at the call of his voice, always with a watchful gaze on him as he created more and more. He became better at reading the emotions on human faces, and he was sure they were as proud of him as he was. They had shown him to this other way of life, and he was living for it in a way he never had before.

They’d chosen to give this to him, chosen to accept him into their lives and bring him with them, and he could not be more grateful. He was their friend, something they told him over and over and over, something they _ showed _ time and time again with the way they didn’t fear to clap a hand on his shoulder or offer for him to try their different kinds of food around the fire. They didn’t fear him, or assume he would ever turn on them, and when a set of newcomers came to the jungle with their red flags and struck fear into his monster heart, they banded in front of him and demanded they leave. They protected him, without hesitation and without circumstance, and he knew he would do the same.

If only he’d been able to. If only he’d _ known. _

The jungle wasn’t what they had thought it was. It wasn’t just a biome like any other, it wasn’t just a forest for them to learn and exist within, somewhere to call their home. There was something else to it, something that none of them could have predicted. It started out innocently enough; he’d get lost sometimes, coming back from the lake they liked to fish at or their builds just a small distance from his mossy skull, even when he was absolutely sure he’d taken the right turns the same way he always did. Sometimes he was sure the sun moved impossibly around the jungle, sometimes setting behind his skull and sometimes rising from behind it, in a way he was sure he must have been imagining. The others saw it too, especially once he pointed it out, but they all said it was impossible, and didn’t question it further. He was sure it worried them, but they were trying not to show it.

Then, it got stranger. He’d start seeing things that weren’t there— people that weren’t his friends, but who disappeared the instant he blinked. Or buildings, somewhere deeper in the jungle, that he could never get closer to no matter how far he wandered. Sometimes, those would disappear too, or he’d blink and it would suddenly be the middle of the night, as if hours had passed in an instant. On more than one occasion, he was sure he’d never find the skull again, never see his friends again, left to forever wander the wilderness of the impossible jungle like those people he’d see for only moments before they’d disappear. He learned to stop wandering too far, the last time he made it back. He never went outside of the light of the torches they laid down around their area, after that. He warned the others to do the same.

How he wished they would’ve listened.

The next thing he noticed was the… _ vines _ clinging to one of his friends, the way they wove around and clung to his body seemingly of their own accord, despite the fact they were detached from anything and should have been dead. When they pointed them out, he seemed surprised at their presence— as if he hadn’t noticed them at all, and a creeping feeling of dread began to settle at that notion. He wanted his friend to remove the vines, to pull them off and come closer from his further outpost deeper in the jungle, but he only brushed off the concerns and directed the group back to whatever they’d been doing. He couldn’t remember, now, what it had been.

The next time he saw his friend, the vines were longer. They covered more of his body, wrapped too tightly around some of his limbs, and he seemed _ distant. _ He was distracted, and he kept mumbling about the jungle, about the trespassers, about protecting the heart, whatever that meant. He didn’t seem like himself anymore; and that was when, looking around, it became clear that the other two were nowhere to be found. As if they’d just disappeared, or more than likely, gotten lost wandering in the jungle just as he had. So he clung, then, to his only remaining friend, grabbed his hands and dragged him into the skull, barricading them away from that jungle outside. They weren’t safe there, he was sure, but it was better than being out there where it could twist the very heavens to suit its needs.

And then, during the night, he dozed off. And then his friend was gone, the barricade opened and his meandering footsteps wandering off back into the jungle. The jungle that he was then sure, without a doubt, was consuming the very people who had taken him in and taught him what friendship was. The people who had given him everything and protected him without hesitation, the ones who set up camp here purely to keep him safe; and then, they were gone, disappeared into that horrendous forest, and he couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t save them, he couldn’t even _ find _ them, and lord knows he tried. He tried for hours, and then days, and somewhere along the way, it turned into weeks. He joined them, there in the jungle; lost and wandering, with no hope of ever leaving, but he held on. He had to _ find them, _ he had to drag them out of there and cut those weeds from their bodies himself if he had to. He refused to leave them there, to be consumed and alone, when he could still find them. He could do it. He _ would do it— _

  
  
  
  


—Except he couldn’t.

There would never be a way of telling how long he’d been in there, wandering the endless green. He came to hate that color, the sickeningly bright green that invaded his dreams and took the only friends he’d ever had from him, and he wished he could rip the color from his own skin. He felt like he was a part of that awful place, from the way he blended in perfectly to the way it called to him, as if he belonged. He began cutting through the underbrush with more and more force, his throat raw and his voice ragged from yelling every foreign profanity his friends had taught him at this twisted jungle. He returned nearly to the state they’d first found him in; wild and vicious, ready to attack at a moment’s notice, and he hated the jungle for taking everything. It took his friends, it took what little of a home they’d built, it took all of the humanity they’d slowly taught him, until he was nothing more than a wild animal roaming the endless expanse of twisting, magical forest that refused to let him escape.

The days and nights seemed to pass as they pleased, the sun and moon setting wherever they pleased and at any time they pleased, sometimes speeding through the heavens so quickly he felt dizzy and could only press his face into the ground and will the spinning away. He stopped using his natural camouflage to blend in, refusing to associate with this damned place in any way he could, and began to face the horrors of the darkness head on and all alone. No longer did he have his friends to protect him, to pull him from fire and to step up beside him with their weapons when he faced an enemy. There, lost in that jungle, he was all alone, with no one to help him. And so he changed; his attacks became precise, his precision became ruthless, and his spite for that place kept him alive.

He no longer knew if he’d even find his friends alive, if he ever did find them. But if he found them dead, he knew what he would do. He knew, he’d find whatever caused this, whatever controlled that jungle, whatever the heart of it was, and he was going to burn it to the ground. He didn’t care if he’d be able to escape or not.

But until he knew their fates, he kept wandering. He kept searching for them, long after he’d lost his voice completely from calling their names. Names that would never leave the forefront of his memory, only moments away from his thoughts even years later, names he’d still find himself calling out in his sleep even in another world entirely.

He’d have kept wandering forever, until the day he died, if something hadn’t changed. And change it did; he was used to seeing people that didn’t exist, who would disappear when he blinked, and he ignored the form in sparkling blue armor at first because of it. He glanced at the man, and he turned away, continuing to hack away at the vines with a vengeance. He thought he was alone, that the person was gone the instant he looked away from them; until their voice reached his ears, and he knew they were _ real. _

“We have to leave, Doc.”

He didn’t know this person, and he didn’t know how they knew his name. Only his friends knew his name; they’d given it to him, after all. But then, maybe that meant his friends had told this person about him, and that was the only thought that brought back the humanity they’d taught him long enough to stop and hear what he had to say.

“It’s time to move on. We’re all ready to go; there’s something wrong with this jungle, and we need to go before it spreads and takes anyone else.” That human man had explained, holding out a hopeful hand for Doc to take. But he didn’t want to take it, he wanted his friends. “They’re gone, Doc. We’ve looked. We have to go while we can, or it’ll take us, too.”

He didn’t want to go. He refused to go. He wanted his friends, he needed to find them, he needed to _ help _ them, to save them from this place they’d only gone to in the first place for him. The man wouldn’t listen to him, though. He was dragged from that place, dirty and feral, kicking and screaming as well as he could with no voice left, and his friends were left behind, never to be seen again after they’d been consumed by that jungle.

* * *

Doc was a different person back then. He’d been a timid, wild creature of the night, something that existed only to end itself in one fateful aggressive blast and to take a human with him when he did. But _ they _ had been kind, _ they _ had taken him in and taught him how to _ live. _ That jungle took it all away, and it changed him, along with the years that passed by without his friends. He made new ones, of course; Xisuma was equally as kind to him as they were, after he dragged him out of that damned place, teaching him all over again how to regain his mind from what had happened to it in there. And all of the others took to him just as quickly, even those two with the red flags that his friends had once stood up to for him. But he never stopped longing for what had once been, what had been the start of it all, and he was never quite able to shake off the guilt of not being able to save them. They saved him; but he couldn’t return the favor, no matter how hard he tried.

Though he may have left the jungle far behind, dragged from that world to a safer place by the friends of his friends, he never stopped searching. And he never would; not when he knew they could still be out there, somewhere, against all the odds. After all, he refused to believe they were dead unless he saw it himself.

And maybe, just maybe, someday, he’d find them again, if he were to just look toward the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> and then bdubs fell into a pool and doc became slightly less emo


End file.
